Noel Skelton, a Conservative Scottish Unionist MP from 1922 to 1935, is developing a reputation as an intellectual forerunner of ‘Red Toryism’ and the ‘Big Society’ (Blond, Reference Blond2010). In 1923, he wrote a series of articles for The Spectator, later published as a pamphlet under the title Constructive Conservatism (Skelton, Reference Skelton1924) in which he used the phrase ‘a property-owning democracy’.

Torrance reproduces these Spectator articles in an appendix. Skelton argues that the Conservative Party must act as an ‘architect’ of the future not as the ‘caretaker’ of the past. His analysis of politics in the 1920s is simple yet perceptive and well worth Torrance's resurrection. ‘Britain is now, electorally, a complete democracy’ (p. 230) he states, and because Britain is an educated democracy − ‘alert, sensitive, receptive, plastic’ (p. 232) − its citizens are susceptible to ‘fundamental principles’ embodying a ‘social conscience’; an ideology coming from ‘the Socialist disguised as an educator and a teacher’ (p. 232). Skelton had a valid point; in the 1920s, Labour was capturing the political high-ground. Back in the late 1960s, talking to Jim, an elderly Labour Party member and formerly a foreman at a textile machinery manufacturing company, I mentioned Thomas Hill Green. Jim went upstairs and brought down a copy of Green's Lectures on the Principle of Political Obligation. This, he said, was the set book for a course on social theory, delivered by a lecturer from a nearby University, and paid for by the workers to fill in the hours when they were on short-time!

Skelton asserted that the Conservatives had to claim the moral uplands; territory that could be found in the ‘property-owning democracy’ idea. He turned the eighteenth-century Tory notion that only ‘the man of property’ could be trusted to vote responsibly on its head. Since the franchise could no longer be denied to those without assets, then those without property had to be supplied with enhanced opportunities to acquire ‘individual’ assets and thereby develop the ‘character’ that comes from the responsibilities linked to ownership. His prescription for the achievement of a property-owning democracy was:

1. (1) for the wage-earner, whether in factory or in field, industrial co-partnery, or its halfway house, profit sharing;

2. (2) for the agriculturalist, who seeks to become completely his own master, small ownership;

3. (3) for the rural-world as a whole, agricultural co-operation;

4. (4) for the community, to secure it against sudden assault, the Referendum.

   (p. 240)

Referendums were a somewhat bizarre inclusion in the property-owning democracy idea and were presumably included as a counter to the more radical ideas propagated by the educated labour elite that claimed to represent the working-class. More surprising was the absence of homeownership from Skelton's prescription. Indeed, throughout his political career, Skelton rarely mentioned homeownership and, in his time as Under-Secretary of State at the Scottish Office, he produced no initiatives to promote owner-occupation. None the less, the homeownership dimension of ‘a property-owning democracy’ was identified and emphasised by a number of politicians influenced by Skelton's ideas. In 1924, Stanley Baldwin claimed that the Conservatives ‘differ profoundly from the Socialists [in wanting] the people to own their own homes’, linking this aspiration to the promotion of ‘self respect and independence’ (Baldwin, 1924, quoted in Williamson, Reference Williamson1999: 182). Anthony Eden and Harold Macmillan had been members of a parliamentary group of young Conservative MPs – known as the Young Men's Christian Association – who attempted to reshape Conservative Party policy in the 1920s and recognised Skelton as their intellectual leader. Eden used the phrase ‘property-owning democracy’ in his 1946 speech to the Conservative Party and, within the idea, he included owner-occupation for the ‘returned soldier’ alongside a greater share for the worker in the ‘ownership of industry’, and measures to help the tenant farmer to owe his farm (Eden, Reference Eden1946).

Does Skelton deserve a reputation as the John the Baptist of ‘Red Toryism’ and the ‘Big Society’? Although chronicling the connections made by others, Torrance is cautious. I am sceptical. ‘Red Toryism’ and the ‘Big Society’ are hazy ideas capable of being linked to numerous intellectual precursors, and, for example, to equate Skelton's idea of agricultural worker co-operatives with co-operatives formed from local government employees to run public services is a stretch too far. The endeavour to make such connections seems a misguided attempt to anchor a footloose electoral gimmick in the writings of obscure but interesting authors − reminiscent of the effort to ground Blair's notion of a ‘something for something society’ in the writings of John Macmurray. Nevertheless, Torrance's book is an engaging, well-written account of the efforts of a Tory MP and his young supporters to modernise the Conservative Party in the 1920s and a testimony to the enduring appeal of a quality catch phase.